I4.0I: A New Way to Rank How Involved a Company Is in the Industry 4.0 Era

Abstract

Cloud, IoT, big data, and artificial intelligence are currently very present in the industrial and academic areas, being drivers of technological revolution. Such concepts are closely related to Industry 4.0, which can be defined as the idea of a flexible, technological, and connected factory, encompassing the shop floor itself and its relationship between workers, the chain of supply, and final products. Some studies have already been developed to quantify a company’s level of maturity within the scope of Industry 4.0. However, there is a lack of a global and unique index that, by receiving as input how many implemented technologies a company has, enables its classification and therefore, comparison with other companies of the same genre. Thus, we present the I4.0I (Industry 4.0 Index), an index that allows companies to measure how far they are in Industry 4.0, enabling competitiveness between factories and stimulating economic and technological growth. To assess the method, companies in the technology sector received and answered a questionnaire in which they marked the technologies they used over the years and the income obtained. The results were used to compare the I4.0I with the profit measured in the same period, proving that the greater the use of technology, the greater the benefits for the company.